


No Safe Passage

by ChocolatePecan



Series: A Place for Tomorrow [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Aranea hands out some more tough love, Ficlets, Friendship, Gen, Hope, Prompto has a reputation as a BAMF, Sadness, World of Ruin, prompt fills, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 07:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14563548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocolatePecan/pseuds/ChocolatePecan
Summary: When Prompto goes AWOL after an incident with a refugee convoy, there's only one hunter Dave trusts to drag him back to Lestallum.Ex-Commodore Aranea Highwind, bounty hunter extraordinaire.





	No Safe Passage

**Author's Note:**

> I've been accepting prompts via my tumblr, and initially I was offering 500 words in exchange for a word, a character, a place in Eos, and a thing. I soon realised I'm not capable of writing anything less than about 10-1500 words XD;;
> 
> Since they're practically story length, I'm posting these ficlets as part of a series called 'A Place for Tomorrow'. There will be at least five of them, but I'm still accepting prompts. If you want to prompt me, come see me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/opheliacrow) :)
> 
> This one is for the lovely @yourroyalannoyance and the prompt words: twinkle, Aranea, Vesperpool, and ball.

It’s not her business, Aranea thinks, treading the overgrown path to the Vesperpool. Under the hooded sun, the sky is a constant hazy brown. Her boot nudges the half-rotted corpse of a Royalisk and she steps around its feathered bulk, pushing the head out of her way with the end of her lance.

What does she care if the prince’s bestie wants to drop out of radio contact? Why is it her trouble if the hunters are out looking for him? Let the kid be a man. He can look after himself, she’s seen him do it.

Problem is, Prompto also has a tendency to crumble when he’s the only one he’s protecting. He doesn’t have a kill-or-be-killed instinct. He’s had to learn that. He shouldn’t have to walk around with a gun in his hand, no matter how good a shot he is. He ought to have a day job as an engineer and spend his weekends with his camera, snapping nature shots. A peaceful job where he gets to keep being nice to people. Not a job where he has to kill things.

This isn’t that world, though, so if he’s out here on his own he might just be a liability to himself.

To her right, Aranea hears the splash of movement at the water’s edge. Whatever it is sounds small, but she can’t afford to take chances. She readies her lance and edges towards the old fishing hut, now a haven for seadevils to lay eggs that with each generation are more mutated than the last.

The sun casts just enough light to flash on the ripples of the Vesperpool. Against it is a shadow of a man, blonde head lowered, shoulders hunched. His feet are dangling off the edge of the fishing jetty, hidden in the rot-laden filth of the water. He swings them then, and she hears the same splash she heard earlier.

Aranea doesn’t try to hide the _thud-unk_ of her boots on the wooden decking. Prompto still doesn’t turn. Not even when she puts the point of her lance beneath his shoulder blade and says, “Gotcha, Shortcake. You’re dead.”

He lifts his head slightly, but doesn’t turn. “Aranea.”

“Didn’t know you were into fishing.” Aranea points the lance to Prompto’s legs and taps his knee. “Unique bait. Keep dangling those down there and you’ll never need to worry about finding boots in your size again.”

He still doesn’t look up. Aranea nudges him in the spine with her boot. “Came all the way out here so Dave wouldn’t have a stroke. You gonna talk to me or what?”

The twinkle of the remaining sun on the Vesperpool is just enough to see that Prompto has something in his hands. It’s small and round, and he turns it slowly between his fingertips. After a moment more, he hands it to Aranea.

It’s a ball – the kind of really bouncy ball kids throw at the wall to see how much of mom’s glassware they can break with the rebound. It’s pink and blue and yellow, the brightest colours she’s seen since leaving Lestallum two weeks before.

“A kid gave it to me.” Prompto’s gaze is fixed on the surface of the Vesperpool. “He got attached to me when I was evacuating refugees through Saulhend Pass. When I had to go down to the back of the convoy, he gave me this and said ‘it’ll keep you safe’. I told him he should keep it then, but he insisted. So I told him I’d give it back when we got to Lestallum.”

Prompto’s face is motionless. There’s not even a twitch when the words stop coming.

When Dave called her in over the hunter’s radio frequency, Aranea had thought his concern for a single missing hunter excessive – until he’d told her which hunter it was. If he’d told her that Prompto had been on the refugee route through Saulhend Pass, she wouldn’t have paused. Any hunter walking away from a five-oh-one mercy mission is worth looking for.

Communication lines in Lucis are kept for hunters, Exeneris employees and official missives, but rumours travel in spirals, not lines. Candles have been lit and hats have been removed in every manned outpost in Lucis as a sign of respect for the countless hunters and refugees lost in convoys coming through Saulhend Pass. They take that route from the south-east of the country in an attempt to get to Lestallum, but the impenetrable cliffs on either side mean that if you end up with too many daemons at your front and rear there’s nowhere left to run.

Young recruits challenge each other to survive it and prove they deserve to rank up. Dave’s lost so many that way he’s had to outlaw entry to all but the most experienced hunters. The route is so renowned for its danger that it has a new name – the five-oh-one route. It’s a name that strips it of the dignity bestowed by the word ‘pass’.

Aranea crouches beside Prompto. “Ballsy move, leading a convoy through the five-oh-one.”

He shakes his head. “I was second in command.”

“I hear a handful of people walked away this time. You were lucky to survive.”

“We lost the group captain. And a daemon got the kid. Nine others, all gone. At least one family wiped out.” Prompto presses finger and thumb to his eyes. “I managed to get the kid’s parents to Lestallum and maybe six other people.” He shakes his head, like he’s following an internal rhythm. “His mom wouldn’t even take the ball back from me.”

Aranea turns it in her fingers, the feathered colours garish against her palm. “So you keep it as a reminder of your failure.”

Prompto’s Adam’s apple bobs at length, but he finally swallows and nods.

Aranea rolls her eyes before she raises her hand over her shoulder and lobs the ball. It sails high up into the air over the Vesperpool, the pink still visible as it turns over and over. It pauses before its inevitable descent, riding the air as though it’s as thick as cake batter. Just as it hits terminal velocity, the ball disappears into the murky water with a plip.

“No!” Prompto gets to his feet, water slopping across the jetty. “What did you do that for!?”

“Don’t hold your failures so close. It’s your successes you need to cling to.” Aranea stands too. “You got dealt a crappy hand and you rescued eight people despite it. Nine if you include yourself, and you should. You can’t save them all.”

“There were twenty people on that convoy!” Prompto kicks the raised post of the jetty so hard a chunk of wood splinters off. “I didn’t even make it out with half!”

“Do you know how many refugee convoys have been lost on that route?” Aranea says. “I count at least twelve. If you got anybody out, they ought to feel damned lucky to be alive.”

“And who’s going to trust me as a hunting partner now?” Prompto says. “I don’t trust me. I wouldn’t even trust me with a supply run.”

“You’re missing the point. _Everybody_ will want you as a partner because you came back from the five-oh-one. Do you think Dave put you as second on that convoy because he wanted to get rid of you? Or because he thought that you, of all people, would stand a chance, even after all those other guys had failed? You do know that it’s the people who are good at their jobs who get asked to keep doing them, right?”

Prompto turns his back on her. His boots clump to the decking’s edge, and he looks down into the water. The heat is starting to bring out the scent of decay. He locks his hands behind his head and stands still. Only his chest moves, hard but controlled, like he’s managing his emotions.

When he speaks, he sounds like somebody fifteen years older. “How can I go back to Lestallum and look at those parents? How can I even think about meeting all those people whose loved ones I couldn’t save?”

Aranea isn’t one to dwell on the past. She’s done things she’s not proud of, but she doesn’t let it bother her. Nor is she one to wear her heart on her sleeve. But as much as she can’t tolerate the ugliness of self-pity, there’s something too pure about the kid to just destroy outright. Given everything he’s been through, the fact that he can still access any feelings at all is miraculous. If he can keep it, his compassion is something they’ll need when the war is over.

She sighs. “Kid, if you keep running convoys, you’re going to lose people. You’ll lose good people. You’ll lose bad people. You’ll lose people you like and respect. You might even lose yourself. But if you don’t run the convoys, you’ll lose all the people you could’ve saved from the outlands.”

The hands on the back of Prompto’s head slip down to his neck. He’s listening.

“You survived. The kid didn’t. We have to save ourselves before we can save others. That’s all you did. Consider it an investment in the next set of lives you save. Or the next. Or the next. Maybe you’ll save every member of a family next time. You can’t know.”

The locked hands go up and over his head to his forehead. Then he rubs his face. The eerie quiet of the Vesperpool intrudes.

By the time Prompto nods, he’s already turning back to Aranea. His hands have dropped to his side. They drift to his belt, and he props most of his weight on one hip.

Aranea turns towards the overgrown pathway. “Guy I know, back in Lestallum. Name’s Dave. You know him?”

Prompto clears his throat behind her. “Yeah. Maybe? Hunter guy.”

She’s pleased he’s taken the banter. “Think he’s keen on you. Mind if I drop you off there?”

Aranea keeps walking while she waits for an answer. The rotting twigs and foliage on the path crunch under two sets of boots, and she hears Prompto sniff.

“Why not? Works for me.”

It’s almost like old times, Aranea thinks as they walk towards her truck, except that he’s even better at looking out for himself and others than he was before. He’s good at defying expectations. She’s glad. There’s hope for him after all.


End file.
